In processing sensitized sheet material, such as photographic film, print paper and the like, it is necessary to immerse the sheet into several different liquid baths. During the processing of the sheet, however, it is important not to mar the treated surface or the final result will not be of the desired quality. In the case of conventional photographs, a fingerprint, for example, on the coated, or emulsion, side of the paper or film can yield the fingerprint image on the finally processed paper.
In the past, efforts to prevent damage to the emulsion on photographic films and papers have taken the form of tongs with plastic or rubber tips for handling the paper. Tongs, however, can be used for only one sheet at a time so that processing a large volume of prints using tongs would be very time consuming. For processing large quantities of material there have been frames for holding a piece of film or paper whereby a piece of coated material is held by its edges, allowing the liquid bath to contact the surfaces of the material. The prior art frames normally comprise a plurality of channels into which a sheet of material slides so that the sheet is held along three edges. Such frames tend to be difficult to use because one must be very careful in placing the sheet into the frame to prevent folding or creasing of the edges. Once in such a frame, the sheet can bow sufficiently that its edges may come out of the channels, resulting in numerous problems. Currently, a drum process is frequently used for photographic materials. While a drum processor provides a number of advantages, it is very limited in the volume of paper it can handle, and it is subject to contamination. Thus, it becomes difficult to process a large number of sheets in a drum processor because the drum must be very carefully cleansed for each few sheets that are processed.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 638,916 and 389,300; Swiss Patentschrift No. 46,590 and Canadian Pat. No. 636,200 (all incorporated herein by reference) relate to photographic film or paper holders but are not believed to overcome the forementioned disadvantages.